Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

New York blues hotshot Solomon Hicks has announced details of his new album How Did I Ever Get This Blue?, which will be released on 23 January via Artone/Provogue. You can get a first taste of the album with his new single Further On Up The Road.
 
Hicks is a thrilling paradox, a sonic contradiction. He’s an old-soul roots scholar who salutes ancient musical forms – blues, jazz, soul, funk, gospel – but also a renegade gunslinger here to bend, stretch and scratch them for the modern world. His songs race from earworm originals, past pop covers torn up with electronica and punky riffs, to reignited blues standards that prove how potent this genre still is in the right hands.
 
Talking about his new single  Further On Up The Road – made famous by Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland –  he says, “I feel like I’m in Memphis when I hear the Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland version – it just had a really nice mid-tempo feel, like I’m driving in the car. Kirk and I didn’t want to take the song away from its roots, but it just sounds like we’re bringing it up to date. It sounds more like New York City than a studio down South. It’s more polished. But it gets right to the point with the guitar and vocals. It wastes no time getting you into that. That one has Chris ‘Whipper’ Layton, Kevin McCormick and Tommy Mandel on Hammond organ.”

“I want to shock people,” says Hicks with a megawatt smile. And whether you were there at his barely legal teenage club shows, caught on for 2020’s breakout debut Harlem – or hearing him for the first time on his new album How Did I Ever Get This Blue? – the rebel energy of this acclaimed singer-songwriter always moves the needle.

“It’s great to be alive in a time period where I can reach back to the past, but also be inspired by the now and the future,” says Hicks, whose accolades include the 2021 Blues Music Award for Best Emerging Artist Album. “With this new record, I wanted to showcase where my ear, my head and my guitar playing is at right now.”

Tracking in Austin, Texas, with producer Kirk Yano, Hicks assembled a crack-squad studio band that spans from US roots icons like Chris ‘Whipper’ Layton of Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble to seminal Bronx turntablist DJ Logic.
 
“Y’know, the usual suspects,” he smiles of an all-star cast that also includes Kevin McCormick (bass), French vocalist Bénabar, Joanna Connor (slide guitar), Tommy Mandel (keys), Keith Shocklee from Public Enemy (drum programming), John Nemeth (harmonica), Les Warner (of The Cult on drums) and Frank Amato (vocals). “It’s like building this car,” reflects the bandleader, “that goes at 200mph.”
 
The album they created together races from transformations of Further On Up The Road and Feels Like Rain to untamed reworkings of Adele’s Rumour Has It and Bruno Mars’ When I Was Your Man (not to mention Hicks’ originals, How Did I Ever Get This Blue and I’m Burnin’ Up).  Far from a ‘covers album’, each song unfolds as you’ve never heard it before. “I’m not looking to copy or recreate sounds from the past,” he nods.

Track Listing

1. Further On Up The Road
2. Dimples
3. Driftin’ And Driftin’
4. AllYour Love [I Miss Lovin’]
5. Flyin’ High [Yesterday]
6.How Did I Ever Get This Blue?
7. I’m Burnin; Up
8. When I Was Your Man
9. Rumour has It
10. Feels Like Rain

Born in Harlem in 1995, he soaked up the sonic kaleidoscope that flowed through city life. He enrolled at the Harlem School of Arts and the prestigious educational program Jazzmobile. But his real birth as a musician came at the sharp end of the city’s club scene.
 
As the fabled stamping ground of Duke Ellington, the Cotton Club seemed too big a stage for a 13-year-old – yet Hicks stepped up to earn the big band’s lead guitar spot and the respect of those hardened players.
 
Hicks blazed a trail across the city, a cult-hero performer everywhere from the Apollo Theater and B.B. King Blues Club (where he played backup guitar and took huge inspiration from Jr Mack) to St Nick’s and the New Amsterdam Musical Association in Harlem. While the stages got bigger – including the 2015 KISS Kruise and Joe Bonamassa’s 2017 Blues Cruise –He deems Harlem – released in 2020 on Provogue, fusing originals with reinterpretations – his true debut.
 
If Solomon Hicks came to shock us, mission accomplished. Fusing age-old human truths with street-smart modern attitude – while tearing up the rulebook of how roots music can sound – How Did I Ever Get This Blue? is the instant-classic sequel that will lock down devotees and rally new fans to the cause. “I’ve gone through life since Harlem,” he says. “Relationships, breakups, breakdowns – to put all that into this new album was so inspiring. For me, this record is something that musically excites me. And that’s the most important thing – that my soul is recharged…”

Solomon Hicks Online 
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